


amber and other parasites

by orphan_account



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Assassination, Fluff, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Soulmates, the universe will stop for no man, you are a fool to think that you are anything more than this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 19:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20822357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: newt is cold, and good at his job. thomas is a beating heart on two legs.(there is only one way this story can end.)





	amber and other parasites

**Author's Note:**

> well hello! this fic would not have been possible without the DARLING [eisha](https://newtparadise.tumblr.com/) who thought up this killer prompt for the tmrrb. she also made some lovely art to inspire my monkey brain that you can find [here](https://newtparadise.tumblr.com/post/188035904035/the-maze-runner-reverse-bang-2019-newtmas-au)!
> 
> no idea how many chapters this is going to have, nor have i set an update schedule, but there is certainly a lot in store. this idea gripped me from the moment i read it, and i'm committed to doing the story justice. i hope yall enjoy!

There is only one way that this story can end. 

I know it. You know it. The parties involved know it. 

(Or, more accurately, they will come to know it, sickly and slowly, like a virus blooms in the brain.

They will come to know it, fates locking into an inevitability, intertwined.)

There is only one way this story can end, however-

The story _ really _ starts decades ago, before either of them were a ghost of a thought on fate’s twisted mind - but the ending starts exactly a month before the world falls apart, in the dying afternoon light of a London coffee shop. 

Their destruction is made by brushing hands.

(Newt doesn’t make it a habit to touch other people - in fact, one could even say that he makes it a habit to _ not _touch other people. Because, when he does, it tends not to end well (for them, of course). And when he does, they tend to be, well, cold. Or at least, on their way.

Thomas, however, is not cold. 

Thomas is a beating heart on two legs.)

It is 3:58pm when time comes to a full stop as their knuckles first meet over a pair of steaming cups. 

“Oh, sorry. Here.” The man holds out a bottle of honey like glowing amber, an immediate surrender.

Newt smiles curtly, doesn’t look at him. “Oh, no. I was going for the lids.”

“Oh,” the man responds, laughing almost silently to himself. Newt sees the stranger eyeing his coffee from his peripheral vision and, unsurprisingly, he speaks again. “You take it black? Man, I could never.”

_ Oh. He’s American. _Newt glances to the other cup and finds it a tawny shade of brown, a steady stream of honey sinking into the liquid. He looks up, and sees the man is not paying one bit of attention to the damage he’s doing to his drink. 

Instead, he’s looking at Newt with this sort of smile on his face as if he knows all of Newt’s secrets.

_ You’d be running, guaranteed. _

He almost says something about keeping a strict diet, but no words come out. The clouds outside shift slightly and send a single beam of sunlight streaming through the shop, landing in a strip perched delicately over the man’s face, cutting directly through his eyes. 

Newt is not the romantic kind. But if he was, he might compare the sight to the bottle of honey, now back in its proper place on the counter. He also might say that this man is, perhaps, the most beautiful person he’s ever seen.

But, he is not a romantic, so he draws no such comparisons and says no such things. Instead, he directs his attention back to the cup that isn’t his, watching the not one, not two, but _ three _(3) packets of sugar being poured into it. It is at this point that he becomes aware that he hasn’t yet acknowledged the man’s comment.

“Yeah, I…” he starts but trails off almost immediately as the stranger now goes for the jar of cinnamon. 

He laughs again, louder. “I know, it’s awful. I have a fatal sweet tooth.” 

Newt is quicker this time, smiling immediately. “Really? I couldn’t tell.”

The man looks down almost abashedly, dark eyelashes fluttering down onto pale, freckled cheeks. “I, uh. Yeah.” It takes a second, but he seems to sense Newt still staring at him before Newt even realizes it himself, because when he looks back up his eyes snap to Newt’s own, almost burning. “You gonna - you gonna put that lid on your coffee?”

Newt follows his nod down to the coffee in question - which, oh, yes. The whole reason he came here. He starts, just barely stopping his whole body from jumping. He pulls his eyes from the man’s gaze, straining to leave his orbit. 

“I suppose that is the logical next step, yes.”

The words come out slow. It’s incredibly jarring to realize the degree to which he’s been suspended away from the world which he is usually so grounded to, tuned in to the intricacies of a million moving parts around him: the rhythm with which the cashier taps their screen - _ tap, taptap _ \- probably another black coffee being ordered; the woman ordering it, who is probably in the process of catching whatever flu is going around since she hasn’t stopped sniffling from the moment she walked in the door, no tissue to muffle the sound probably indicating that she’s stubbornly ignoring her own health, hence the coffee and not tea; the man who just got up from his table and bumped it with his hip, nearly sending his drink - pumpkin something? - toppling over onto the floor; the other employee at the sink who just caught the whole scene, eyes widening in momentary fear; the three other patrons who are completely oblivious and the younger girl who seems transfixed on the man at Newt’s side; the couple that just came in with a cold gust of air-

These are the things that Newt would normally notice - the things that he might have noticed if he wasn’t already occupied noticing a hand that is not his reaching to grab a medium-sized lid. 

“Here,” the man says. He hesitates for a second over the drink that is not his, almost like he’s asking permission. Someone or something nods Newt’s head for him and the man proceeds to fasten the lid on, letting out a soft _ there _under his breath when the deed is done. 

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

That same force that took Newt’s head and shook it up and down then takes his mouth and starts to form words, but the man beats him to it once again.

“Well, uh, okay. Bye,” he says awkwardly, doing a curt little smile-nod-bow sort of jig as he steps back. 

“Bye,” Newt echoes, but it’s barely a whisper. Where has his voice gone? Is it hiding down in his throat like the flare of - of disappointment? - that he’s pushing down? He blinks and swallows hard, locking eyes with the man one last time before he turns on a heel and books it out of the coffee shop, liquid sugar in hand. 

And with that, the stranger is gone.

_ Well, that was surely an interaction. _He takes his coffee and sits down at one of the corner tables where he can see the entire rest of the cafe. He takes a breath, crosses his arms, and digs a fingernail into the soft skin of his inner elbow.

_ Find your feelings and eliminate them. _Step one, locate:

Confusion. That one’s easy enough to find. In the back of his head, right at the base of the skull. It sits there flickering and fluttering, reeling from an oddly endearing encounter with a complete stranger. 

_ Find your feelings and eliminate them. _Step two, get rid of it:

The man means nothing to him and neither does their interaction. He will never see him again, so their minute long non-conversation doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have to waste more of his time worrying about it. 

_ Find your feelings and eliminate them. _Do not analyze. Repeat.

The walls of his throat, moving closer together. There is an ebb and flow to it, both light and heavy as his airflow constricts. If he focuses on his breathing, forcing the stale air of this cafe in and out of his lungs, he can wash the feeling out. 

_ Find your feelings and eliminate them. _

Deep in his stomach, crawling. There are larvae, hooking into the lining of his stomach and cocooning, waiting. He can close his eyes, summon up his stomach acids to flood them away, disintegrating.

_ Find your feelings and eliminate them. _

And then, something else - beating thickly in his chest, reverberating all the way down to the tips of his fingers. It starts out heavy but then peters out into a thin sort of buzzing feeling, undeniably warm. He doesn’t know what it is, but he doesn’t have to - he just has to get rid of it. 

He is not used to this warmth - this unfamiliarity that makes it like he is living in a stranger’s skin. He wants to unzip it and crawl out, leaving this bastardization of himself behind in the corner of the cafe.

He is supposed to be_ cold. _ His hands are a _ tool. _

He shakes out his arms, stretching and flexing his fingers underneath the table until he can feel them cracking and popping like sheets of ice. He reasons with himself that he is tired, mentally and physically exhausted from the job he just finished. This is only his first day off, after all. And it was a high-profile, high-paying contract, so he was pulling overtime for nearly two weeks to make sure it all came together as planned. Finally talking to another person just pushed him over the edge of mental stimulation. 

_ Which is entirely normal. This happens. It’s happened before, and it will probably happen again. It’s nothing you can’t handle. _ He ignores the feeling of fate and tells these things to himself. _ You probably just need some caffeine - you’ve been having so much of it lately that your body craves it more now. _

With this revelation he grabs his drink and brings it up to his lips, waiting for the chemicals to hit his bloodstream without so much as a thought to the taste, liquid barely even brushing his tongue before it slides directly down his throat. 

After an almost pained swallow, he puts the cup down.

And then, he picks it back up. 

His fingertips begin to malfunction again, coffee surely rippling inside the cup as his hands shake, ever so slightly. Newt blinks, taking a breath. He brings the cup up to his lips once more.

(On the tip of his tongue, there is the slightest sweetness.)

At the same time, a weak stream of amber-red light floods through the cafe as the Autumn sun dips below the city. In the doorway stands a man illuminated from behind, cup of coffee already in a tightly gripped hand as his head turns slowly, surveying. Time hangs in suspension, balanced on the edge of a tilting Earth. 

Then the universe shifts, and it all comes hurtling forward.

He appears in front of Newt with red cheeks, heaving chest, and coffee-covered hands. “Will you go on a date with me?”

“Yes.” There is not one second of hesitation, trigger mouth firing with precision.

A smile blooms, breathless. “You don’t even know my name.”

“I don’t care.”

This one takes him out for a moment or two, beginnings of a laugh cut off once or twice before he finally settles on, “It’s - it’s Thomas.”

“Thomas,” he echoes - _ again _ , he notes - chest hammering. _ Do not analyze. Do not analyze. Do not- _

“-one?” Thomas finishes some sort of sentence, apparently, and Newt blinks.

“I’m sorry?” He thinks that maybe he’s ruined the moment, maybe he’s shattered the reverie and now he’s out of whatever place that was where he didn’t have control of his body or his mouth and now the man - _ Thomas _ \- is about to flea the cafe seeking shelter from this strange, strange person with the black coffee and the vibrating fingers and the dark circles under his eyes and-

-and then Thomas smiles. “A name. Do you have one, or is it just me?”

_ Oh. _“It’s Newt,” he answers.

“Newt.”

“Yeah.”

“I like that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

_ Find your feelings. _

“Cool.”

_ Eliminate them. _

“Cool.”

_ Find your feelings. _

“Hey, Newt?”

_ Find your feelings. _

“Yeah?”

_ Eliminate them. _

“What are you doing today?”

_ Eliminate them. _

_ Eliminate them. _

_ Eliminate them. _

_ Eliminate- _

“Nothing.”

When he was a child, Newt did not have many opportunities to make meaningful connections. He used to think that it was his fault and not a product of his circumstances, just a bad hand from fate. Fate - this was never something he believed in. Fate was just a stock phrase that adults used to explain away his turmoil, making promises of a better tomorrow while never actually doing anything to secure that future.

Choices. Actions. These are the things that Newt believes in. It was a choice when he was chosen to take part in the Academy, one that sprung from actions - _ his _actions. Fate had no part in it, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to give up any of the credit. Credit is given where credit is due, and fate wasn’t due for shit. 

(What Newt doesn’t know: fate _ was _ due, _ is _due, and the time to collect is very, very soon.)

Newt has made many choices in his life, ones that have led him to where he is and who he is. And the nature of who he is - _ what _he is - has required him to be someone who doesn’t stick around very long.

When he slips out of Thomas’ flat in the middle of the night, it is a choice.

It is about the first choice he makes all day, the rest of his time with Thomas a whirlwind of gut feelings and possessed speech, eight hours of riding backseat to a body and mind that is not his. It is not a choice when he grabs Thomas’ hand in the street, running across a busy street like a man possessed by the spirit of a lovesick teenager. It is not a choice when he lets pieces of himself spill all over their dimly lit table, making a mess of their dinner. It is not a choice when he lets Thomas lead him up the stairs to his flat, breathless and hungry. 

Sitting on the floor of his own flat, tailbone digging into the concrete, he puts his head in his hands and tries to figure out where he went wrong. 

This is his first mistake, the _ went _of it all. This is presumption, assuming that any of this should be thought of in past tense. 

This is the beginning.

The next morning, Newt wakes up late. There are a few blissfully normal moments where he goes about his usual routine, uninterrupted by thoughts of gentle hands and whispered words. But then, he takes a sip of his coffee and finds it just a touch too bitter. It is in this moment that the events of the day before come flooding back to him, like a wall of water just released from a dam.

A dam that Newt had _ thought _he’d sealed up tight, never to be opened again. His night with Thomas was just that - one night. He groans, pushing the coffee aside and letting him chin sink down onto the counter, arms splayed out in front of him. Newt has had very few hangovers in his twenty-four years of being alive, but this is somehow the worst of them all without having consumed a drop of anything even vaguely intoxicating.

(That is, if you’re not counting Thomas.)

After a minute or ten of feeling sorry for himself, Newt pulls his torso off the counter and takes a deep breath. _ It’s done. Get ready for what’s next. _ And the _ what’s next, _in this case, is work. If today is Saturday - which, yes, it is, Newt confirms by flipping his phone over - then he has three entire days before he has to go back to work on Tuesday. Normally, he’d only get two days off after completing a contract, but since this last one was a much bigger job than normal, he’d been allotted four days off to rest and recover before officially being called back in to work. Usually, if he’d already been given another assignment, he’d use that time off to run recon on whatever the job entailed and start planning strategy, if the higher ups hadn’t already started doing so.

But this time, Janson hadn’t given him anything. 

Newt could tell that his last few assignments had been leading up to something, he just didn’t know what. And now this - it feels like the calm before the storm, one last rest before something big goes down. Which is why it’s more important than ever for him to actually recoup his strength and focus.

Which is why he can’t suddenly go running around developing _ attachments. _

To give credit where credit is due, Newt was at least of sound enough mind when he climbed out of Thomas’ bed to take the necessary steps so that he didn’t become an attachment. He never gave him a phone number, or a last name - or even an accurate _ first _name. He was careful not to mention which part of London he lives in, nor did he give any actual details about his job. 

So far as Thomas is concerned, Newt is a ghost.

Though, on the other hand-

Newt is pretty sure that the list of things he doesn’t know about Thomas is shorter than the list of things he does know about Thomas. He knows he’s from America - Seattle, Washington, more specifically - and that he has two parents and a little brother. He knows that he studied biochemistry at the university, and that he graduated this past April. He knows that he works for a lab called WCKD, researching different strains of some sort of man-made virus that might be able to cure cancer someday. He knows where he lives, how he spends his free time, where he gets his coffee, what transit lines he takes to get around - Newt knows enough to build a bloody profile on him, one that even Janson would be proud of. He could fill every single box on that sheet. He _ should _fill every box on that sheet, just to get it down and out of his mind so that he can move on from whatever this irrational and meaningless emotional hiccup of a one night stand. He knows he could, and should, but-

What he doesn’t know, is what to do with everything else. 

There are no boxes for the way that his laugh brings a room to life, curious and bothered heads alike turning to find the source of the sound, crystal clear. There is no spot to write in a note on the way he plows through the world oblivious, beautifully naive and endlessly enthusiastic. There is no section on sugar consumption habits or what plants he keeps in his flat. There’s nowhere to transcribe all the stories about his little brother or his best friend or his boss, in all her adored glory.

Newt’s life has always been sharp, and clean, and bound. There has never (or, depending on how deep you want to dig - how deep _ he _wants to dig: rarely) been any runover, or uncertainty, or loose threads. And now Thomas is a tapestry, weaving his way under the fibres of Newt’s skin like the weathered hand of fate. 

And despite building a life on severance, the threads tethering his fingertips together don’t seem to be quite capable of slicing.

(At least, not yet.)

On Saturday, he doesn’t sleep until late. His mind continues to be a mess throughout the entire day, leaving him restless and unable to focus. It’s not his fault he doesn’t know how to be idle. Perhaps Janson thinks the extended time off is a reward for all his hard work, but instead it feels like a punishment. He dares to wonder if he’d feel the same way if yesterday had been a normal day, if he’d just grabbed his coffee and ran straight out the door of the shop. 

He doesn’t let himself wonder further. 

(_ Do not analyze. _)

Once night falls - which, god, is _ finally _coming sooner and sooner; Newt can’t stand operating during the absolute bullshit that is extended sunlight hours, truly a creature of the night, and for good reason - he pulls on his running gear and hits the streets. The air is crisper than he’d expected, a welcome surprise as it prickles his skin, even through his clothes. The sounds of the city pass him by as he weaves through the streets.

This has always been his anchor. When a job seems like it’s reached a dead end - strategically, of course - and he can’t find any more avenues to pursue, he runs. He is fast, and silent, and as soon as he hits a steady rhythm, he always seems to just float above it all. The city, in all its ugliness and its beauty, falls away and his mind goes blank. _ This _is what he’s been made to aspire to, what he’s been trained to access on demand. Complete control. He’s never been able to tap into it as quickly as when he’s putting one foot in front of the other, night damp and cold and endless around him.

Tonight, he finds no such ease. His thoughts launch from one side of his mind to the other, back and forth in a continuous loop. Flashes of grinning teeth and freckled cheeks, soft moonlight and rumpled sheets, fragments of phrases and half-words spoken in a voice that is not his. It’s overwhelming, surrounding him, nothing like the dull background ache of wonder he _ thought _was going to be the worst part of his day.

He has no idea how long he’s made it into his run when he pulls off into a dark alley, coming to a stop with lungs burning. He bends in half, leaning over himself in a sort of half-stretch. 

Folded like this, he would be practically invisible to anyone who happened to glance down the alley. _ Good, _he thinks. None of his running gear is actually legitimately that; there is not a single strip of reflective material or a flashy logo to be found on his body. He is covered, completely, just a shade off of black, practically one with the shadows. A ghost. There is only a sliver of skin exposed, slight opening of fabric for his eyes to peek through and not much else. He’s made the mistake of being careless before - just the thought of it sends a shiver through him, one that has nothing to do with the temperature outside. He tries to push it down - an automatic response, like an unconscious feedback, his body doing the work for him - but in tonight’s mental turbulence it resurfaces.

(Feet on pavement, scuffling. Again, careless. It takes much less to give you away, almost nothing to get you killed. A command - a bloody useless one at that. A shared look - no, not a look. A gesture? A feeling, maybe. An argument: a mistake. 

And in a moment of frustration - a mask lifted, a pair of eyes rolled.

A flash of blonde hair.

And then, chaos.)

A bus rattles along nearby, and Newt blinks. Now, his hair is pressed tightly to his head, fabric of the cap resting snug over his ears. The roots itch, longing for a hand to rustle through, alleviating the pressure.

A pair of voices fall into and out of earshot, high pitched laughter that sounds like a whine. His mind hiccups and there are fingers tangled in hair, gripping tighter and tighter just out of time with breathy whimpers, like a chain reaction. Newt’s hands shake and he rolls his neck from side to side, focusing on every pop and crack his ears can discern. 

He needs to move. He needs to get out of his mind. He needs to _ run. _

_ This shouldn’t be affecting you, _ he tells himself. _ This isn’t affecting you. _He repeats it to himself like a mantra for the next three blocks, over and over again without stopping so that there is no room for anything else, any other thought, or memory, or feeling - nothing. 

He keeps going until he can’t feel the phantoms on his scalp, and then he goes an hour longer, slipping into the relievingly familiar nonsensation of the nothingness that tethers him away from the world, away from himself. 

When he gets back to his flat, he falls asleep and does not dream.

On Sunday, he gives into the curiosity. In the morning, it somehow does not seem all so dire, as things feared in the night usually tend to seem in the morning. The intense wave of emotion he’d experienced later in the night has been thankfully left behind, drawn out to wither in the cold by the pull of the city, always alive and ready to consume whatever Newt threw at it. He should have known to trust his process, trust his training. Satisfied by this turnaround, he resolves to make this day a productive one and brings his work laptop out into the kitchen to get some work done.

Except, there is no work to be done. 

_ Oh. That’s right. _Janson didn’t actually assign him any pre-job work for this next contract. Which, unfortunately, leaves him with a big fat nothing to do today.

Which is how it happens. 

He rationalizes it as a project - an exercise, if you will. He hasn’t actually had to build a profile in a while, his past block of assignments all pre-prepared by either Janson himself or someone on the logistics team that he’s decided he wants to have a boring week. 

(It is the general consensus among Newt’s - well, coworkers_ , _ if you will - that recon is the most tedious part of the job, just some mandatory prerequisite to all the fun stuff. _ Homework _ \- that’s what they called it. This was, of course, back when Newt actually _ had _coworkers. Janson pulled him out of that stream of the program years ago, around the same time he had his first - and last - failed objective. 

The memories are faded, worn. He remembers them only in moments, snapshots of a shared past he can’t be sure really happened.)

Newt likes the work that comes before a job. He likes going into it feeling one hundred percent prepared, like if he freaked out or messed up - it doesn’t happen, but it _ has _ happened - then he could trust that his preparation and training would kick in on autopilot. Sometimes it does anyway, if he manages to reach that icy state of calm where he’s just floating above everything, job turning into nothing more than pulling a trigger. That’s when he is at his best. That’s what makes _ him _the best, the reason that Janson repeatedly assigns him to all the highest profile cases.

Anyway - recon. Newt likes it, and he’s good at it. And with none assigned, he creates his own assignment. 

The fact that it’s Thomas is oddly even further sobering, toilings of yesterday and strayings of the day before falling away as he goes through the familiar process, cold and clinical. He knows that this isn’t a _ real _target sheet - small voice in his mind exhaling a sigh of relief at that fact - but the feeling that washes over him is the same. He fills out the sections with ease, barely even having to stop to recall the masses of information that Thomas gave him, all of it just there in his brain ready to access. 

If Thomas was an actual target, they wouldn’t have given him to Newt. He is low-hanging fruit, basically begging to be a closed contract. In their short time spent together, he gave up the full catalogue of base information: full name, date of birth, home address, place of work, school, daily habits and methods of transport - and that’s before Newt even googles his name. With _ that _, he can easily access social media profiles that will tell him everything about his closest friends and family. Which he already knows the names of, thanks to Thomas’ gushing, so it’s even easier.

It almost makes him feel sad, realizing that there are people out there that can just exist, that _ do _just exist, without being on constant alert. They’re oblivious, tuned out. Is he sad because he feels sorry for them or because he wants to be them? Newt doesn’t care to indulge that wonder. 

On Monday, he reverts to ritual. The day before a new job borders on something of a sacred event for Newt. He starts with a cup of tea, which he brings up to the roof of his building as the sun rises. It’s a little dramatic and kind of makes him feel like he’s in a movie, but he supposes that’s the point. He should get to have _ some _indulgences, after all. 

Legs dangling over the edge, he cradles his mug close to his chest and watches a burning sun creep out from over the edge of a high rise. 

The building isn’t particularly noteworthy, but it sticks out more than the others stretching up to match the height of his own building (He lives in one of the tallest residential buildings in the city, and at no small price). It’s a rather oddly shaped building, organized in a set of tiers that get thinner the higher they go. The whole thing is kind of like a triangle with the front tip sheared off so that it lies flat, that panel the only one bearing no windows, sleek and utterly barren save for a string of letters, running vertically downwards. _ WCKD. _ It prods at the edges of his memory, familiar but not enough to grasp onto. The rest of the building is covered in windows, now dark but usually properly lit until well into the night. Probably corporate, full of middle aged men and women that think doing their paperwork at midnight earns them some kind of inherent value, like, _ hey, I’m working late. I am the epitome of self-made. _All this while the only reason they’re there is because one of the higher-ups owed their dad a favour after they finished partying their way through their business degree. 

Insignificant, all of them. 

He wouldn’t be surprised if he went into work tomorrow and found that his next assignment was one of those windows. That would be convenient, actually.

Something about being awake before the city calms Newt, bringing a great sense of peace to his soul. It feels even more so today, the maelstrom of these past few days finally leaving him once and for all. 

It’s not like he hasn’t had one night stands before. And two night stands, and maybe a three night stand here or there. That’s not what sent him so off-kilter. It’s the fact that the one night stand was preceded by something Newt _ hasn’t _had before: a date. 

Technically, nothing of the sort is strictly prohibited by Janson or any policy, but - attachments are not something that coexist very well with Newt’s line of work. _ Relationships _ are not something that coexist very well with Newt’s line of work. And the fact that that word - that scary, scary word, far more terrifying than any failed objective - is something that even enters his mind when he thinks of Thomas and what they did? 

He has never been more ready to throw himself into an assignment. 

On Tuesday, he stops to get coffee before work. It’s like second nature, legs delivering him at the cafe before he even knows he’s going there. At the start of every new assignment, he is debriefed by Janson. And each time, he brings him a coffee. Maybe he’s being a kiss ass, but Newt enjoys being Janson’s favourite. While his work speaks for itself, there’s no harm in sweetening the metaphorical pot just a little bit.

He is just about to sweeten the literal pot when the world shifts on its side again, his fingers colliding with a bottle of honey on their way to the packets of sugar. A bottle of honey. _ The _ bottle of honey.

Right, because this is his regular coffee shop.

Where he got coffee on Friday.

Where he met Thomas.

His heart rate rises and then falls again, erratic as he blinks once, and then twice, forcing himself to wait before he lifts his head. He knows who is in this room: two baristas - one at the cash, one at the bar. Another employee towards the back doing some washing. Two customers in line, together. Five more at the tables, all alone and doing their best to ignore each other. One rising to leave, packing their things into a messenger bag. 

None of them are the boy that stood in this exact spot, four days prior. 

Something sitting beside his heart plummets, disappointed. _ In your chest. Get rid of it, _ he tells himself automatically, the feeling easing immediately at the command. _ This is just a store that sells coffee. There is nothing special about it. You will not allow any sort of attachment to grab hold of it. _

He picks up the bottle of honey and moves it to the other side of the counter, out of sight. After another breath he grabs a packet of sugar and empties it into the larger of the two cups. Then, he secures them both with the appropriately sized lids and leaves the store.

_ This is just a store that sells coffee. You are just a customer on your way to work. _

Outside, the city breathes, adjusting underfoot. He starts up the sidewalk, studying the people that filter by. Most are busy, not bothering to meet his stare with eyes turned down. Others are clearly tourists, eyes pulled up this way and that with no repose. Polar opposites - diverging to two extremes, with Newt left at the focus, forgotten. He is a ghost, scarcely perceived as he makes his way through the world.

Which is exactly how he likes it.

It does not run two ways - each moment he is collecting info, the output of the world streaming into him like a data centre. This is controlled. This is calm. This is background noise falling away, nerves silent and poised to move. This is time, slowed down. 

There is a man, on Newt's right side, walking the opposite way. He is of average height, skin dark and mostly hidden under his clothes, despite the warmth lingering in the breezeless air. His eyes are trained on something straight off in the distance, hardened and unmoving. His jacket is bulky, weighed down to the side, and he maneuvers in and out of the throngs of slow walkers with ease. Something about it - something about _ him _\- seems all too familiar. 

He is practiced. He is _ like Newt. _

Newt slows slightly, turning to watch the man as he passes by, seemingly oblivious to his new observer. He lifts his hand into his pocket, slow and practiced, as he picks up pace. Something in Newt’s heart skips, a deep, guttural understanding of what may take place in just a few moment’s time. Time drags even further, leaving the stranger almost in a snapshot as Newt watches him get further away, shoulders square and strong.

Then the world lurches forward, falling on its side. Newt, suddenly, has coffee seeping into his clothing. 

“Oh, _ shit _, I’m so sorry,” says an unknown voice.

Oh, no. Actually-

“Jesus christ,” Newt grumbles automatically, well before his brain processes any of the words that have been said to him, and with what voice. “It’s fine, it’s-”

Thomas. It’s Thomas.

Many, many things cease to exist in that moment, including but not limited to: oxygen; the city of London; time; the ground; all semblance of physical sensation; the people on the streets - heads down, up, or forwards. There is nothing and there is everything, but all of it is brown eyes and flushed, freckled cheeks, and the taste of honey and the passionate little gasp that comes at what is not the end of a minutes long run-on sentence.

All of it floods in at once, body buzzing with the energy of it all. He feels like he could vibrate out of his skin, head spinning and churning so fast he’s sure the inside of his skull is nothing but mush. It’s exhilarating and he hates it, has never felt less in control of his own body and his own mind and his own life and he decides to either throw up or leave or both, but instead this is what happens:

“I’m sorry. I’m not good - I’m not good at, at-” He does not finish the sentence, the last word dying on his breath as it tumbles from his mouth in a suicide dive, loud and heavy and broken. It dies between their feet, messy and _ there _, not daring to be picked up and spoken. 

They stare at each other for a long, long time that may also be a very short time in which Newt manages to notice several things, including and this time also very, very limited to: the yellowing bruise on the side of Thomas’ neck, just barely peeking out from underneath his jacket’s collar; the imperceptible blink of his eyes, narrower just slightly as he studies Newt so, so intensely; the setting of his jaw and the crease deepening between his eyebrows - anger?; the infinite and continuous and nauseating pool of brown circling his irises - this time dark, darker than he’s ever seen, neverending ring of everything and nothing and _ searching _, searching and searching and searching until-

Until the universe hiccups, and Thomas softens, melting into something that is not a smile, not quite.

(It is much, much better.)

“You’re kind of a ghost, y’know?” With the question comes a tilt of the head and a tilt of the lips, to the side and to the sky, respectively. He says is with this almost giddy sort of breathlessness, like he has rehearsed it one thousand times.

Newt has rehearsed nothing. “What?” He barely gets the word out, a breath that is almost nothing. 

Thomas swallows, face falling serious. “I tried to - I’ve been trying to, to find you. Since that day I’ve been - I couldn’t find anything. I know you said you don’t do-” he cuts himself off, like he can’t bring himself to say the word. _ Relationships. I don’t do relationships, _Newt finishes for him inside his mind. His lips are just as frozen, stuck on the same spot. 

If he says it aloud, then he has to acknowledge it.

Thomas continues, skipping over the blank he knows Newt has already filled. “-there was - we had - Newt, you and I both know that we’re - that this-” It seems like he is struggling to find the words, every premature stop like a finger twitching on the trigger of a gun that is pointed directly at Newt’s heart. Then, finally, after an eternity of sounds:

“This is something.”

And Newt finds that, in this moment, like most other moments in his life, it is his own hand holding the gun.

“Reckon I could try again?”

After that, they are kissing. 

After _ that, _Newt is remembering that he has twenty minutes to get to a briefing that is twenty-five minutes away, and forgetting that he has coffee all over his crotch, and telling Thomas to tell him his number.

“It’s - here, just let me put it in your phone.”

“I don’t - I don’t have a phone.”

“You don’t have a _ phone _?” 

Newt laughs and he sounds like a madman, all bright and happy. He shakes his head, using all the willpower he has to restrain himself from grabbing Thomas’ face and kissing that so endearingly confused look right off of it. “No,” he says. At this point people have started to scowl at the two of them, breezing by with roughly brushed shoulders.

“Alright,” Thomas says, seeming to accept this answer at face value. “Do you - can I write it down?”

Newt swallows. “Just tell me.”

There is another touch of confusion, and then skepticism, and then Thomas just shakes his head, and smiles. “Alright,” he repeats, and then he starts reciting his phone number. Each digit is a symphony in Newt’s ears, strings of the violin practically pressing themselves into his fingertips, pure kinetic energy. He finishes, and then starts to repeat it, but Newt stops him.

“No, I got it.”

“You got it?”

“I got it.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

The balls of his feet begin to burn, sidewalk urging him on. Thomas blinks, softly, and then bursts out into laughter.

“Oh my god, I made you spill your coffee all over yourself. Now you have to go into work like - oh my god, you have to go to work!” The switch from levity to absolute catastrophe is so caricature like that it would almost comical, if Newt didn’t have to go to work.

“Bloody hell, I have to - shit, I have to - shit!”

“Newt, go!”

There is a moment of urgency, both pairs of eyes bulging in fear and anxiety and everything else and it is in this moment that Newt decides that he is already so far outside of himself that he might as well pull Thomas in for one last kiss, universe willing. 

And then, with one last look towards the endless expanse that is just one man -the endless expanse that is _ possibility _ \- he turns and emerges from the beginning of the end, utterly oblivious.

Newt crosses the threshold into the briefing room just as the time flips over to the next hour, somehow precisely punctual despite the morning’s time-defying hold ups. Janson is already sitting at the other side of the table, a thick manilla folder on top lined up parallel with the table’s edge. There’s almost a gravity to it, the weight of it pulling Newt’s focus downward. He swallows.

“Good morning,” Janson says, voice uncharacteristically chipper. Newt looks up and sees, of all things, a _ smile _on his face. “Today is a wonderful day, don’t you think?”

It takes everything Newt has in him not to let his brain short-circuit. He takes a moment to reset his mind and reign himself in. “I’m glad you think so,” he settles for, almost-sarcasm coming out easier than he’d expected. “I was going to be bringing you a coffee, but.” He doesn’t finish the sentence, gesturing to his general torso area instead. Janson blinks at the coffee stains, then lets out a chuckle as Newt finally sits down.

_ A chuckle. Bloody hell, he’s either lost it or- _

“That’s alright, Newt. We won’t be needing caffeine to keep ourselves on today’s task.”

Newt leans back in his chair, waiting for the monologue to begin. Janson clears his throat.

“From the moment I met you, I knew you were destined to do something special, Newt. There’s a reason why I brought you into the academy. I knew you were different. I knew you would rise above all the other boys - those boys, they’re not like you. You’re not like them. You never were. You were always just-”

Something triggers in Newt’s brain, a switch being flipped. “Exceptional?” 

Janson smiles down at the table, a touch away from a sneer. “Yes. You remind me of myself, at that age. Driven, precise.” He lifts his head, eyes piercing into Newt’s. “Willing to do whatever it takes.”

There’s a shift in the air, tightening in Newt’s throat. It lies somewhere between excitement and dread, with an awful sort of knowing. 

Janson places his hands over the folder. “It’s time, Newt. This is what we have been building to your entire life. These last few jobs, this is what we’ve been preparing to get everything in place. It’s all ready for you.”

With these words everything else falls away, the world narrowing down to a point. Newt’s body is still and cold, complete control at his fingertips. _ This _ is who he is. _ This _ is what he’s been waiting for, what he’s been working towards since he could speak. This is the only thing that matters. The events of this morning seem like a far-off dream now, Janson’s words echoing around the walls of his skull. _ Whatever it takes. _Newt knows, deep in his chest and his stomach and his throat and all the other places that are now empty and frozen calm - as they should be, as he should be - that it is true. Whatever it is that’s contained in that folder, Newt will do whatever it takes. 

Janson nods like he can read Newt’s mind, like he knows. He slides the folder across the table, slow motion. 

“This is your path, Newt,” he says, almost something holy about it all. This is Newt’s cue to take it, to dive in and fulfill his greatest task yet. He knows that once he opens that folder there is no going back, but he knows this, too: it will complete him, finally give him a good reason to be on this Earth. 

He happily takes the plunge.

Janson studies him as he opens the folder. He doesn’t notice the universe convulsing, folds of space and time contracting and bursing open again, setting this one small room aflame. 

There is only one way this story can end.

And it starts with a picture of a boy inside a folder inside a burning room. 

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> if you have thoughts! let me know what they are! in the comments? or come chat with me on [tumblr](http://00250.tumblr.com)!


End file.
